<h1>Mono Internals</h1>

	<p>This section documents some of the internal APIs used
	inside Mono that developers extending or altering Mono might
	want to use.

<h2>Strings</h2>

<h3>Other Encodings</h3>

	<p>These routines are used when coping with strings that come
	from Mono's environment, and might be encoded in one or more
	of the external encodings.

	<p>For example, some file systems might historically contain a
	mix of file names with both old and new encodings, typically
	UTF8 for new files, and the old files would be encoded in an 8
	bit character set (ISO-8859-1 for example).
	
	<p>These routines try a number of encodings, those specified
	in the <tt>MONO_ENCODINGS</tt> environment variable and return
	unicode strings that can be used internally.

	<p>See the mono(1) man page for more details.
	
<h4><a name="api:mono_unicode_from_external">mono_unicode_from_external</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_unicode_to_external">mono_unicode_to_external</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_utf8_from_external">mono_utf8_from_external</a></h4>

<h2>Marshalling functions</h2>

<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_alloc">mono_marshal_alloc</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_asany">mono_marshal_asany</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_free_array">mono_marshal_free_array</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_free_asany">mono_marshal_free_asany</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_free">mono_marshal_free</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_castclass">mono_marshal_get_castclass</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_delegate_begin_invoke">mono_marshal_get_delegate_begin_invoke</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_delegate_end_invoke">mono_marshal_get_delegate_end_invoke</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_delegate_invoke">mono_marshal_get_delegate_invoke</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_icall_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_icall_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_isinst">mono_marshal_get_isinst</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_ldfld_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_ldfld_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_managed_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_managed_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_native_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_native_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_proxy_cancast">mono_marshal_get_proxy_cancast</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_ptr_to_struct">mono_marshal_get_ptr_to_struct</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_remoting_invoke_for_target">mono_marshal_get_remoting_invoke_for_target</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_remoting_invoke">mono_marshal_get_remoting_invoke</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_remoting_invoke_with_check">mono_marshal_get_remoting_invoke_with_check</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_runtime_invoke">mono_marshal_get_runtime_invoke</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_stelemref">mono_marshal_get_stelemref</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_stfld_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_stfld_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_struct_to_ptr">mono_marshal_get_struct_to_ptr</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_synchronized_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_synchronized_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_unbox_wrapper">mono_marshal_get_unbox_wrapper</a></h4> 
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_get_xappdomain_invoke">mono_marshal_get_xappdomain_invoke</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_load_type_info">mono_marshal_load_type_info</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_method_from_wrapper">mono_marshal_method_from_wrapper</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_set_last_error">mono_marshal_set_last_error</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_marshal_type_size">mono_marshal_type_size</a></h4>

<h2>Metadata Loader Locking: Internals</h2>

	<p>The locking functions here are used by code in class.c and
	metadata.c to lock access to the shared hashtables inside the
	MonoImage.
	
<h4><a name="api:mono_loader_lock">mono_loader_lock</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_loader_unlock">mono_loader_unlock</a></h4>

<h2>Garbage Collector Internal Interface</h2>

	<p>The internal interface of the Mono GC is the interface used
	between the runtime engine and the garbage collector.
	
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_alloc_fixed">mono_gc_alloc_fixed</a></h4> 
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_free_fixed">mono_gc_free_fixed</a></h4> 
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_make_descr_from_bitmap">mono_gc_make_descr_from_bitmap</a></h4> 


<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_base_init">mono_gc_base_init</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_invoke_finalizers">mono_gc_invoke_finalizers</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_is_gc_thread">mono_gc_is_gc_thread</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_pending_finalizers">mono_gc_pending_finalizers</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_register_thread">mono_gc_register_thread</a></h4>
<h4><a name="api:mono_gc_finalize_notify">mono_gc_finalize_notify</a></h4>



